eksogen report has some good recommendations going forward but what rankled me most was the list of Stakeholders consulted – who chose those?

The communities with poor broadband are surely the most important Stakeholders and should have been asked their views on their experiences in trying to develop community broadband projects to better inform the R100 project.

Report
Farrpoint technical advisers are also in the process of assessing the technical, commercial, operational and financial considerations for using SWAN24 as a source of backhaul for community projects which would reduce the total capex and opex required to deliver them.

Comment
CBS were asked to look at the use of SWAN backhaul originally in 2015 including lining up pilot projects in South Of Scotland to help iron out technical, commercial, operational and financial considerations

Report
The CBS team could be deployed to encourage and work with communities to be innovative and build networks where vouchers can be used to link premises to community schemes or R100.

Several communities discussed this approach with CBS several years back using voucher schemes that were available at time – CBS response it was being looked at with the assistance of their consultants

Suppose you cant hurry these things and better late than never on both the above ………………..

Extract from ekosgen report
Issues with the CBS aggregated model approach have hampered the progress of 13 pipeline projects in a number of ways. Procurement for these projects proved to be problematic after the expiry of the BDUK State Aid in June 2015. Use of the General Block Exemption Regulations was discussed as an interim solution until the establishment of a new BDUK scheme. However, CBS believed that negotiations with the EU would be protracted and chose to wait on the new scheme instead. This delayed all projects wishing to go out to procurement.

Lived experience – which went beyond “discussion” of use of General Block Exemption Regulations (GBER) read on

A project in Fife spent several months going through CBS Open Market Review (OMR) and State Aid Public consultation with CBS clearly specifying the planned use of GBER in the State aid public consultation document – this took place in autumn 2015

The project were “encouraged” by CBS to start the procurement process including from Highland and Island Enterprises PR people looking for good news story at the time.

The “project” was a bit nervous about the risks of using GBER (as it had not been used in UK for a broadband project) but were given reassurances by CBS and its external consultants and the procurement was set fair to kick off at start of March 2016 . Alas within days phone call to project – CBS were pulling the plug on the use of GBER because of the risk and concerns about its fitness for purpose and decision to await the new BDUK scheme as yet with no date on its availability.

Project never did receive written confirmation of this decision from CBS in writing (a common practice of CBS not to put things in writing ?) and it is worth mentioning that the aforementioned phone call did not come from a senior member of CBS and was left to local Adviser.

Cosequence of this among other things

Sucked life out of project and it came to a standstill awaiting new BDUK Scheme 6 months later

Once new BDUK Scheme was announced the Open Market Review and Public Consultation had to be done all over again

Public funding to cover staff salaries and other additional costs down the drain
Damaged credibility with communities

I could go on but the most ironic and amusing aspect of this was behaviour of CBS and their highly paid consultants. It was as if the intended use of GBER never happened especially financial compensation from CBS for all the expense incurred.

I you doubt the veracity of the above here is extract from State aid public consultation document issued in 16 October 2015 by CBS

The Fife Community Broadband Project believes our programme complies with EU State Aid guidance. Any public funding for this project will be awarded under the EU State Aid-approved Highlands and Islands Enterprise General Block Exemption Regulations (GBER II Article 52) scheme for broadband infrastructure – delivered through the Community Broadband Scotland programme.